The Eagle and the Raven (26 page)

“If the Druid did not believe that you could do it he would never have spoken for you or come all this way,” she replied. “It is worth a try, my love.”

“You know what it will mean.”

“Yes, I know.” She unwrapped her arms and embraced him. “Be glad, Caradoc. We are still free, still alive. What other days of unlooked-for hope wait for us under the shadow of the mountains?” Her voice shook with something, excitement or fear he could not tell.

“I think in spite of everything you will be happy to see these mountains,” he chided gently, and she stepped away, snuggling her arms inside her cloak again and smiling at him.

“I feel a great peace,” she said. “Here we are, cold, hungry, without tuath or tribe, while all around us the world has gone mad. Yet at the thought that I will at last see the land I have heard of only in tales, my heart pounds as it did on the day we shared the cup of marriage!” There were other truths behind the words. Be cheerful, she was saying, have courage. We belong to each other whether the world ends or staggers on. He answered her smile, the grim, pure line of his mouth curving for a moment, then he left her and mounted the horse standing ready for him as Cinnamus and Caelte swung to ride beside him. Fearachar handed up little Eurgain and he settled her before him, her head against his wet chest, her eyes half-closed in utter weariness. “I’m hungry, father,” she murmured, but he did not respond, knowing that she would sleep for many hours yet, and their fast would not be broken until well into the morning. Looking back he saw Llyn pick up the reins of his mount and Fearachar nudge his horse close to check the harness. Then Bran turned, raised a white clad arm, and they began to move. Caradoc eased his daughter’s weight closer into his shoulder. The west, he thought. There is magic in those words, spells of fate and deep rivers of mystery. I have changed, already I feel it. Farewell, Gladys, my sister. May the wine of the next world bring you forgetfulness and peace. Farewell, Camulodunon, tortured ruin of my heedless youth. Ah, Cunobelin, Togodumnus… Togodumnus…

He looked back. The night was already thinning. The path behind him wound about the bole of a great, gnarled oak and vanished. The trees closed in and made a wet, green wall, clothed in the first mists of morning. You cannot go back, they whispered to him. The way is no longer open. Those days are over. He turned again, kneed his horse, and vanished like a gray ghost with the fleeing shadow of the night.

Chapter Fourteen

G
LADYS
sat alone in the Great Hall listening to the thrumming of rain on the roof. She sat hunched against a wall, her knees up, and her arms wrapped about her legs. She was crying quietly, while through the vents far above her in the thick darkness a capricious summer wind moaned. One lamp still burned, high and lonely, but the far reaches of the echoing room were shrouded in blackness, and she could only sense the tall, carved pillars marching across the empty floor, the cold hearth, and the great shields and crossed spears still hanging where they had hung for years beyond counting. The soft noises of a night almost spent served only to make the stillness in the deserted Hall more poignantly endless. No fire would ever again roar its warm, friendly greeting to tired chiefs who gathered around it, sniffing the meat, chattering of the raid that had ended well. No chieftain would ever again rise from his place, with the light glittering on his golden torc, and his bronze bracelets and brooches flashing as he flung out his arms and shouted for Council. The Hall was a shell, an empty cup from which the sour dregs had been poured, never again to be filled. Gladys felt it complain, moaning gently in reproach and resignation. It was settling into its dreams of days gone by while the unseen tendrils of nostalgia writhed from the corners, mingled with the strange leaf patterns of the dead Trinovantian craftsmen, curled about her with vines of memory and passionate regret.

“Mother,” she whispered into the sad quiet, “Mother.” And the whisper ran around the walls and came back to her, bringing with it dead voices from the past, dead faces, gone, all gone. She caught a mouth open in a great shout of laughter, a shy, quick smile, a contemptuous, tossing head, and then the eyes of Sholto, wide with shock, filling with an astonished pain and reproach like the sudden rush of water when a dam gives way. She groaned, putting her forehead to her knees. I ache, she thought. Mother, how I ache! Come dawn, come death, I cannot live another hour with these memories. Her eyes throbbed and her face burned with the dry roughness of weariness and too many tears. She began to doze, hearing the last lamp crackle and go out, hearing the rain ease, and sensing that the dense darkness of the Hall was thinning. She slept a little, lightly, dreaming that she was lying on the edge of the ocean. The little waves were washing around her, licking her face and the tips of her outstretched fingers, and through the cool sand came the pulse of the rumbling surf. She woke suddenly, refreshed, and stood and flexed her stiff limbs, aware that the rain had stopped and pale new sunlight crept apologetically under the skins of the doorway. She buckled on her sword, went to the water barrel and plunged her face and hands into it, then pushed the skins aside and looked out on the morning.

The fires had died. Only sullen, impotent embers glowed where the huts and houses had been, and the sun fell bright through air no longer murky with smoke. She saw beyond the wall to where the Romans were already astir, cooking their wheaten porridge and squatting easily in their thick short leather tunics, their legs bare and their iron helmets lying in the grass beside them. The centurions moved among them with swagger sticks tucked under their arms, and the optios strode behind. Before Gladys turned away she saw, far back, a group of cavalry officers go by, the sun glinting from their polished harness, the plumes on their helmets bouncing gaily. She walked around to the rear of the Hall, and moved from hut to hut, greeting the peasants who stared at her darkly and muttered as they felt their empty bellies grumble. Then she went back and sat before the door, her eyes on the rinsed blue sky, and her skin warmed by the sun. Presently the peasants came to her. They were barefooted and sturdy and they squatted in front of her with questions in their eyes. She tried to count them as they filled the large open space and flowed between the heaps of dead ash. Two hundred? Three? She wanted to laugh. She rose at last, raising an arm for silence, while beyond them a trumpet blared and the soldiers put away their spoons and dishes and reached for their helmets and weapons. She did not mince words. “Trinovantians!” she called. “My brother and the chiefs of my people have left Camulodunon. They go to fight in the west. They have left me to lead you this day.”

An explosion of rage greeted her as she knew it would. The peasants got up and surged toward her shouting, with sallow, dark, contorted faces. Hunger and fear fanned their anger at this betrayal, but she stood her ground, shouting for silence again and again until they ringed her, still muttering but no longer yelling, a menacing, seething mob. “They will come back!” she lied but her voice carried no conviction and a tall, muscular man pushed his way to the front. His black hair was tangled, his arms were scarred and bare, and his hands were like twin clubs.

“They will not come back,” he sneered contemptuously. “Cowards! The Catuvellauni at last are showing what they are. You should have gone too, Lady, and saved us the trouble of killing you before we go ourselves. Did you think that we would stay and fight for you?” He spat at her feet. “My father was a chief, and his father before him, until Cunobelin came and took away his torc and dishonored him by making him till the soil. Now the Catuvellauni are destroyed, and once more Camulodunon belongs to us.”

“Listen to me, you fools!” she shouted. “If you want Camulodunon back you must fight for it. The Catuvellauni were hard masters but the Romans will be harder. They come to enslave you anew. Stay and fight! Then even if we are conquered we can still say that we were not defeated without honor. I give you back your freedom! I give you back your honor-prices, all of you! I swear by the Mother, by Camulos, by the goddess, that if you stay and we are victorious you will once again be masters of this land!” She lowered her eyes and her voice to the burly, glowering man before her. “Come and stand beside me,” she said. “If you are a chief, act like one, fight like one, and if it is to be, die like one.” He stood there chewing his lip, and seeing his indecision, she pressed him desperately. “If you have any honor left, you will fight. If not, I will fight and die alone and you will be proved to be what Cunobelin called you— stupid cattle!”

His eyes suddenly flared. He grunted like an irritated bull, then he took one step and stood beside her. “We will fight!” he said. “If we win we will sacrifice you to Taran and take this place for our own. If not…” He grinned at her. “If not, we will die as warriors.”

Impatience tugged at her. She unsheathed her sword. “I agree,” she called. “Spread out now. Climb the walls. Take your slings. The soldiers will be ready to break through today and you must keep them from breaching the walls. I have no food or beer to offer you. Everything is gone. But if you win you may feast on Roman food tonight.”

They ran then, unwinding their slings, spreading out as they began to scale the walls, and she left the belligerent chief and walked to where the gate once stood, feeling no shame at having used them. She knew that they would never inherit Camulodunon, and neither would she, but at least their blood would be spilled with honor, and they had lived without honor for more than forty years. How have they borne it? she wondered, slipping her arm into her shield while beyond her the incursus sounded and the troops surged forward with a great shout. I have been without honor for only a few weeks, but already I am half-dead with the load of my guilt.

Above her she saw the Trinovantians pulling stones from the rim of the wall, fitting them to the leather slings, whirling them and letting them fly, and she heard cries outside, and angry curses. But she knew that for every Roman struck there were fifty to take his place, and soon the wall would crumble. Already she heard the grate of spade and pick, saw the earth move in a dozen places, while the deafening cacophony of war battered in her ears. Then directly in front of her a hole appeared, a spade rang on rock, withdrew, and a hand began feverishly to tear at the loose earth. She ran forward, coolly raised her sword, and struck the fingers from the palm. She heard the man scream but immediately more hands were there, and to her right and left more holes were widening, as though rabbits had gone mad and were burrowing in a frenzy to reach the air. Above her the sun beamed down, filling the beleaguered town and all the valley beyond with a dazzling, blood-warming heat. High beyond sight two larks trilled and piped, but Gladys, in a final, drenching sweat of momentary terror, hewed at the first head to appear almost at her elbow and then swung desperately, as behind her the legions began to pour into Camulodunon. The peasants had retreated from the walls, fighting with knives and fists and teeth, a ferocious madness on them, dying without sound, and Gladys turned and fled back up the path to the Great Hall and the shrine of Camulos, her feet matching the rapid thudding of her heart. She whirled at the door to the shrine, flinging her shield away. Snatches of old prayers and incantations flitted through her mind, and she stood panting, leaning on her bloodied sword, and watched the rape of her home.

The battle raged fiercely, still two circles from where she stood. The peasants, men and women, did not fall back. She saw them die, still in the same awesome, strange silence, pierced by swords, impaled by spears. And now there were officers in the forefront, moving ahead of their men, and Gladys watched it all, encased in an armor of fatality that detached her from the scene. Time had run out. Time had played with her for a while and then grown tired, moving on to sport with others, and she was left to die in a weird, cold place where every remaining breath was borrowed from the years before. The soldiers were hunting now, no longer faced with a foe, and the peasants who remained died alone, surrounded by the enemy. The officers came on, but slowly, looking about them, and Gladys straightened, raised her sword to rest against her neck, and drove all thoughts from her mind.

Now they came, toiling up the path with red faces, and swords held close to their breasts with bent arms. She felt herself grow calm. They saw her and rushed forward, shields swinging to cover them, booted feet crunching in the loose stones, and she raised her sword, grasping the hilt in both hands, and leaped to meet them. There was a moment of confusion. She was ringed by swords, stabbing in and out like sharp tongues of fire. One man went down, his leg severed below the knee, and she slashed again, her sword striking a shield with a force that stunned her. A shock ran up her arm and it went numb, but she tugged her blade free, turning to meet the soldier behind her, lunging with a cold detachment while her body danced like wildfire. He ducked, throwing himself forward behind his shield, and the cruel bossing caught her in the ribs, knocking the breath from her as his sword jabbed for her belly. She jumped backward desperately, hearing a sharp, shouted command. She was sensing the men who closed in at her rear where she was defenceless, staggering without balance, and her shoulders tensed against the blow that must come. But it did not fall. Strong arms went around her, one about her neck, grinding her against a hard iron breastplate, one over her own arms, encircling her. She struggled maniacally, screaming with rage. She kicked backward, and her imprisoned hands scrabbled for the knife at her belt, but the inexorable grip only tightened and she felt the blood begin to leave her head. Blackness swam before her eyes and the sounds of the shouting around her began to fade. Her legs gave way.

“Don’t strangle her, Quintus,” she heard someone say. The voice floated to her from miles away, drifting over a heaving ocean where dead men rocked. “You have a handful of royalty there. Plautius will want to see her.” Suddenly she felt herself dropped like a heap of dirty tunics, and the sword was wrenched from her hand. Someone undid her belt roughly, pulling it free, and hands moved over her, checking for more weapons, but she could not move. Her sword arm tingled and throbbed. Her head swam. She could only lie there, eyes closed, while the man with the severed leg went on screaming. “Where are the stretcher-bearers?” the same voice said irritably. “It is all over, there is nothing left to do, they should be here.” She wanted to open her eyes but the effort was too great. She lay there listening to the bustle around her, trying to breathe deeply while her head cleared and she felt strength seep back to her legs.

Presently there was the sound of running feet, and a moment of quiet, then the screams began to recede and at last she was able to open her eyes. She was lying against the shrine of Camulos. Above her, one hand on his hip and the other resting on the vine stick under his arm, stood a centurion. Beside him was his optio, a wide chunk of a man with the thick arms and craggy, twisted face of a wrestler. He still held her sword, and her knife now rested in his belt. Beside him, so close that had she stretched out her hand she could have dabbled her fingers in it, was a pool of bright blood where the wounded man had lain. Good! she thought. I hope the rest of the leg falls off and the stump goes bad and he dies in agony. The centurion glanced down at her and then motioned to his second.

“She has recovered, Quintus. Set her on her feet but watch her carefully. Tricky as weasels, these barbarians.” Gladys found herself hauled unceremoniously to her feet. Her legs were trembling, and where the shield boss had struck her breast, she was so bruised that every breath was an experiment in pain. But she folded her arms and stared straight at the centurion while the optio hovered behind her, his hand on his knife.

“Who are you?” the officer asked. “I know you are royal. Loaded down with silver you couldn’t be anything else. What is your name?” She did not answer.

“She probably can’t understand you, sir,” the optio said. “Can you speak her language?”

The centurion shook his head, uneasy under Gladys’s dark, hostile eyes. “No. Now what shall I do with her? Plautius will want to see her but he’ll be too busy for some hours yet. The gate has to be opened and a place prepared for the emperor. Find a couple of soldiers, Quintus, and put her in the shrine for the time being.” Quintus saluted, and the centurion, after another hesitant, sweeping look at his prize, went away. The optio took her arm.